


A Kiss with a Fist

by orphan_account



Series: Fullmetal Fortnight 2014 [5]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Briggs, Character Study, F/F, Gen, Invasion, Prompt Fic, surprise attack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-10
Updated: 2014-03-10
Packaged: 2018-01-15 06:28:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1294867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Given her absolutely ironclad running streak of luck, Olivier Mira Armstrong wasn’t certain <em>why</em> she was shocked. In times of battle her emotions flattened out into a beaten mask of steel she would strap around her face until she had averted not only the crisis but the most prominent and immediate ramifications thereof. She did not waste breath on orders of <em>don’t die</em>. Because the Bears would know to save their own skins. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t have lasted in Briggs.</p>
<p>She kept her men alive. And when she could not keep her men alive, she would sure as hell avenge them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Kiss with a Fist

**Author's Note:**

> Written for FMA Week 2014. Prompt 3-B: "Alliance".
> 
> As it turns out, writing Armstrong under stress is difficult - and stressing - and I haven't figured out how to bend the situation in such a way to allow for hurt/comfort. It's like she actively repels that kind of crap. I did like handling how she would react to Hawkeye's usual antics; whereas someone like Mustang encourages subordinate freedom, someone like Armstrong demands the opposite.
> 
> I might well need to put together a proper series to handle the hurt/comfort portions, akin to Rush Summer.
> 
> To the May Fan anon, I do plan on writing more May Fan! No, I haven't abandoned the ship; c'mon, it's the damn background of my LP page and you think I'm going to just forget about it? Nah.
> 
> Unedited/unbeta'd/etc. Enjoy and thank you for reading!

Given her absolutely ironclad running streak of luck, Olivier Mira Armstrong wasn’t certain _why_ she was shocked. In times of battle her emotions flattened out into a beaten mask of steel she would strap around her face until she had averted not only the crisis but the most prominent and immediate ramifications thereof. She did not waste breath on orders of _don’t die_. Because the Bears would know to save their own skins. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t have lasted in Briggs.

She kept her men alive. And when she could not keep her men alive, she would sure as hell avenge them.

Yet given her absolutely _ironclad_ running streak of luck, Olivier Mira Armstrong wasn’t certain _why_ the Drachman attack on Briggs had punched her in the gut. Of _course_ they would attack while Riza Hawkeye—unfamiliar with the base and unused to the chill—visited.

Somewhere in Briggs Hawkeye waited under the blinking emergency lights, gun in hand, creeping nervously along corridors whose twists and turns she could not predict, forced to assume that every shadow could represent the stain of darkness that would snuff her out.

“Sir,” said the general’s top colonels and lieutenants, saluting her. “What is the plan?”

The gravity of Hawkeye’s presence proved a consequential weight on the balance of Armstrong’s mind. She teetered on the summit for a second, staring out between twin peaks she could not scale at once, while _her_ senior staff continued to salute, spines erect, gazes set and firm. Had they shifted uneasily, had they coughed, had they frowned at her hesitation, she would have swung off of her course, if only for a moment.

But they _would_ not falter.

Neither would she.

“Teams Delta and Echo, to the ramparts immediately to prevent scaling. Tango, Uniform, I want the tanks rolled out _now_. Kilo, scouting reports on Drachman activity in my hand _yesterday_. The rest, assume usual defence position, formation Epsilon, and stand by for orders.” She narrowed her eyes. The tightness of her throat surprised her to some extent when she managed to expel the words from her throat: “Major Braus, Team Foxtrot’s set on the trail of our guest, Captain Riza Hawkeye. Understood?”

A wave of saluting. Her men answered in unison, down to the tone and inflection: “Sir yes sir!” As they filed outwards in rapid march, Armstrong rested her hand on the sword at her hip. Reminded herself:

She _could not be_ the weak link.

A mountain would not crumble for a splinter in the topmost boulder. Yet a splinter in the topmost boulder would eventually erode away at the summit, and the tallest peak would fall away, forgotten, to the annals of history. As long as she drew breath and felt her heart beat out a martial rhythm in her chest, she would not go down in the textbooks as the woman who lost Briggs because of something as trivial as worry for as someone she loved.

Riza would— _Hawkeye_ would understand. Duty first. The lives of the multitude over the lives of the few.

Drawing her gun from its sheath, Armstrong tested the bullet chamber. Lifted her arm to shoot a bullseye at the wall. Reloaded the singular missing bullet before striding outwards to face the apocalypse with her sentiments carefully screened behind a wall of ice.

By the time she arrived downstairs to commandeer a tank herself, the bodycount had reached three of her soldiers and perhaps a third or almost a full half of the Drachman invasion force. Briggs would make short work of the double-headed eagle that had dared take a shit in the den of the Bears.

“General Armstrong!”

She barely felt the vibrations of the tank as its weight rolled over a Drachman or two, but she heard the voice more clearly than an icebreaker smashed through permafrost. “Take the tank and run with it,” she snapped at the Bear on guard, a female sergeant named Logan Moore with a burn scar that rippled bright red over the left side of her face and descended downwards below the collar of her uniform. “Disrupt the formation. I’m counting on you, Sergeant.”

Moore’s hand snapped to her brow. “Sir yes sir! Thank you, sir!” She grabbed the controls as Armstrong screwed off the top. Siding her sword between the crack, the general smirked to the unmistakably Drachman cry of pain that accompanied sudden resistance in her blade’s arc.

With a bark of laughter she flung the top open, disposed of the Drachman, and surveyed the battlefield again. Snow and blood. White and red. Poetic, almost, in the carnage. But poets did not generals make: Xerxes had proved that.

The nearest messenger—communications specialist Josef Karley—reported: Lieutenant Colonel Miles had successfully repelled Drachman attempts to scale the fortress walls. Most of the enemy within Briggs had likewise been expelled or slaughtered, except for Sectors Golf through Kilo, which the Briggs forces had surrounded and were pushing into. As he spoke his radio crackled: “ _Sector Golf cleared, moving on to Hotel_.”

“Call Major Braus.”

Karley dialed. “They haven’t located Riza Hawkeye yet.”

Armstrong left his side prior to revealing her grimace. If even her greyhounds had lost her scent, either Hawkeye would champion the _world_ with regards to remaining hidden, or the trail had gone cold as a corpse.

But the voice. Armstrong’s hands convulsed into fists. Now, for the voice she had heard from somewhere behind her, whenever that noise that had come from while she had waited in the bloody confines of the tank— _wait_.

A mistake, yes. But a minor one. Her men would not possibly for want of a nail if she investigated Hawkeye’s disappearance, mostly because the discovery of Hawkeye’s state—dead _or_ alive—would set her inflamed nerves at ease. Armstrong did not _do_ stress. And she particularly did not _do_ stress in the middle of a damn forsaken battle.

“ _General Armstrong_!”

Again with the—

The gunshot smashed into her eardrums, so close that she could feel the reverbations of the aftershocks in her skull. Whatever Drachman had waited behind her thudded to the snow with adequate force to kick up a flurry of crystals. Armstrong swiveled on her booted heel to direct the barrel of her gun, point-blank, at the intrusion.

“Olive,” said the intrusion calmly. “I’m fine.”

Armstrong riveted a gaze of ice at the captain. Her grip tightened on her gun, although she lowered it safely to the ground between the two military officers. “Captain Hawkeye, if you _ever_ worry me like that again in the _middle_ of a _battle_ , I will have you skinned alive and your ass hung above my fireplace. Is that _clear_?”

“Transparently, sir.” Hawkeye gestured towards the fleeing Drachman forces currently pursued by Teams Tango and Uniform, along with—Armstrong remembered the formation—Romeo and Sierra at this point, and likely Viktor and Whiskey if the bottom floor of Briggs had been freed of Drachman stench. “I’m honoured that you were worried, sir, that I followed orders and assisted with the repulsion. Shall we tango? It takes two.”

“Do you do this with all commanders?”

“I wasn’t aware that you were looking for me, sir, and I apologise.” Abruptly Hawkeye’s placid visage transformed into a glare. “Wait a moment, you were worried enough about my sake that it affected your _judgment_? Are you an idiot?! Do you have any idea—”

Armstrong slapped her across the face with the back of her hand. “Captain. This is a crisis situation; this is not Central. If the Drachmans don’t kill us, the cold will. Speak to me as you would to General Mustang again, and I _will_ have your hide. _Understood_?”

To her credit Hawkeye did not appear hurt or offended at all, except potentially herself. Briskly the captain nodded, saluted, and indicated the forces once more. “Sir?”

“. . . it would be an excellent show of the Central Command-Briggs Command alliance if we fought as one. Come.”

The Drachmans stood no match. Once the bulk of the battle had completed and Armstrong radioed Miles to begin clean-up, she herself took a task squad to decimate the escaping Drachman forces down to the last man. “It only takes one to deliver a message of loss,” said Armstrong, raising the gun in a single ruthless arc that would not pause. “I’d rather Drachma never find out.”

Upon her return she said nothing to Major Braus. Nothing _whatsoever_. The cold shoulder would snap the major to attention, and if not, a return to Central would do both parties well.

Hawkeye, on the other hand, she invited to her quarters, but she sensed _something_ off. Something she could not name. Not from her, but from Hawkeye.

Perhaps it was time they talked.


End file.
